The Undertaker's Cabinet Page 17

  Moreton grimaced and in the lamp-light his face looked like a stone-carved gargoyle. "You cannot stop me!"

  "You have left me no choice." Again the men came together but this time Benjamin was ready and dropped his shoulder as the older man tried to take hold of him. Moreton fell forward into the cabinet and the doors to hell folded around him. He looked to his father again. Did he have time to lead him to safety before Moreton escaped and launched another attack? He did not wish to kill him but he knew it was doubtful he would leave without doing so.

  Even bathed in lamp-light, his father looked grey and he knew he would not be able to move him.

  "Father?" No reply was issued. "Father. It is I, Benjamin. I will fetch a physician to tend you." A flicker of the eyelid and a tremble of the lip. Was it the flickering light or was it a movement?"

  "Benjamin I can feel my body no longer. What has become of me? Am I again with your mother?"

  Benjamin placed his hand on his father's chest. "Be still. I will fetch..."

  His father's body suddenly arched with a violent spasm before he was still once again.

  "Father?"

  His heart knew it was too late and Moreton had done his deed. He looked down at the festering corpse of Alice Moreton and kicked her rancid skull across the room. "What have I done?"

  Mr Moreton's legs were all that were visible of his body. The remainder lay enclosed in the cabinet; in hell. With great effort he prized them open. He did not know what he would do with the man but it would not involve the police. The jaws opened and Moreton remained where he was; suspended somehow. Benjamin took him by his grubby collar and tried to haul him out but he would not move. He heaved again and as Moreton was released so was the blood in his throat. A great dark geyser made a fountain in the festering air spraying all present; both alive and dead.

  Benjamin crouched beside his friend and mentor; his face and hands slick with blood. One of Moreton's precious instruments had pierced him when he fell into the cabinet and opened his throat with the precision it was destined for.

  He fell back and closed his eyes.

  *

  Benjamin climbed up to the cab and urged the horses on. The elegant carriage of Moreton the Undertaker had three corpses aboard tonight. Three corpses and a beautiful Mahogany cabinet filled with blood. The driver was not at all sure if he were not also dead for his mind was filled with vile and base thoughts.

  He did not know which road he would take but he knew he must be away from the city and away from his sins. He reached down and touched the sturdy box between his knees. It contained the last of Moreton's wealth and with it he would make amends for both of them; he must.

  For three days he travelled along the tracks, paths and roads of which Southern England was made. Some led nowhere, while others led to small villages which had been kept well away from the corruption of the city. The inhabitants eyed him cautiously but it was doubtful any of them knew his business for they could not read. They could smell him though and they detected his fetid cargo.

  Finally, with the horses too weary to continue, he stopped to rest in another unremarkable village. He would not stop long for he knew the smell would bring the dogs to the carriage door. He was lost; as lost as he had been on the first day he stepped from the smoke of the gambling house with empty pockets. He took a deep breath and inhaled clean air; the air of the ocean and of life. He was near the coast and perhaps the best place for him and his load was deep in the sea where all their sins would be washed away.

  "My husband! I cannot rouse him, he has succumbed to the fever. Help me!"

  A young woman ran from her house on the other side of the square; her hands raised to the sky in supplication. She wailed and wept as she ran but no-one was there to hear or aid her. Benjamin lifted the reins to move the horses on. He had no wish to see or hear her grief

  "Please help me!"

  It was too late she had seen him and ran toward the carriage.

  "I cannot help you for I am merely passing through."

  She fell beside the carriage and wept. "You must help me!"

  Benjamin looked around hopelessly. It was mid-afternoon and everyone was either at work in the fields or sleeping. "Where might I find the physician. I will bring him to you if you tell me where he might be."

  She looked up. "He will be in the Inn, one mile that way." She pointed back the way he had just come. He did not recall an Inn but he was so tired he would barely have noticed Christ himself had he appeared on the road.

  He gathered the reins and urged the horses on. "Return to your husband I shall fetch him." He called over his shoulder.

  Before much time had passed he had located the doctor and was conveying him back to the village.

  "I am merely passing through doctor, yet none came to her aid and I felt compelled to act."

  The doctor had clearly been drinking ale for his breath smelled of hops and sweet malt. "You were there at a most opportune moment, sir."

  "I do not regard it so," he answered.

  "Oh come now. An unfamiliar undertaker present at the very time our friend the reaper called. It is seldom this has ever been the case in Littleoak. It may not be grand but you have just found yourself a commission I dare say."

  "A commission?"

  "Of course," answered the doctor. "You have already shown yourself to be a Samaritan and we would not see that act unrewarded, even if the fee is a triviality to man such as yourself, Mr Moreton."

  Benjamin opened his mouth to speak. The carriage was not exactly inconspicuous and the doctor, as a learned man would have read the inscription.

  "I will be glad to help. Anyway I can." He looked over his shoulder at the roof of the carriage. "And there will be no fee."

  "Oh how grand! Mrs Crabbe will be suitably grateful I am quite sure!" the doctor exclaimed. "Then you shall dine with me at at the Inn tonight, Mr Moreton and we shall be friends!"

  The doctor was clearly unperturbed at going to visit a newly-made widow. His thoughts were clearly elsewhere.

  "You have not met the lady yet, how do you know her name?"

  "Mr Crabbe's health has been grave for some time. I am quite surprised he has lasted so long. You will of course stay until the matters are resolved?"

  "I shall be glad of the food and rest, as will my horses." He looked at the road ahead and smelled the fresh, clean air again. The trees shook above him and sent leaves tumbling to the earth before the carriage. He could start again. He could reclaim his own honour and in doing so cleanse the name Moreton of its sins. He took one hand from the reins and offered it to the doctor. "I am Jerome Moreton and I am very pleased to make your acquaintance, sir. Very pleased."

  The doctor took his hand and pumped it hard. "And I am pleased to meet you. Now don't spare the horses for I wish to be back at the Inn before night-fall."

  Benjamin smiled. The smell of clean country air mixed freely with the smell of blood and decay. He would have more than Crabbe's corpse to inter in Littleoak. There were three others who needed his services. Three more and a cabinet.

  Chapter 13

  Bobby rubbed his eyes and yawned. He had no idea what time it was. No idea at all. The room was washed with grey light. It wasn't exactly sunlight but it was light nevertheless. He stretched his hand down to where he'd left his trousers and rummaged in the pocket for his phone. Had he undressed in front of Esther last night? He didn't think so but then again he'd been a little drunk and very exhausted, and that was a heavenly combination for making lousy decisions.

  He read the display and blinked several times to clear his vision. Ten forty seven. How on earth could that be right? He'd been asleep for nearly twelve hours. He couldn't remember ever sleeping for that long; not even as a teenager. Not like Tom. He could sleep round the clock if he put his mind to it.

  Tom.

  He sat up and rotated his neck. If yesterday had been a nightmare it had been vivid to say the least. He felt the need to cry but choked it back. He wouldn't cry a
gain, not yet because there was too much to do. He'd go and see Ruby first. Tom might have contacted her, or he might even be there. He'd been known to play some pretty bad taste jokes in his time but if this was a joke it had gone way past funny. It was so far past that it couldn't even see humour. The moment Jacobs threw that brooch was...

  Was what? He ground his teeth together until a bolt of pain ran up behind his eyes and tried to come out the other side. It was his death certificate, that's what it was.

  He threw back the sheets and stepped onto the cold floorboards. Whatever else happened today, he was going to sell both the business and the rotten house. They needed to go along with everything in it, including the cabinet. He picked up his suit trousers and flapped them about to try and get rid of the creases. He'd get that cabinet back in the same way as he'd get Tom back. They didn't belong with that creep, they belonged with him.

  He found a clean shirt and tie in the wardrobe and looked at himself in the mirror; he'd do.

  "I'm on a highway to hell!"

  He turned and jumped onto the bed in one motion. He didn't even look at the number which flashed up. The song was Tom through and through.

  "Tom?" he shouted.

  The line was silent for a moment. "Bobby, it's me. Esther."

  He suddenly felt nauseous. Esther's voice had sent his blood pressure through the floor. He couldn't speak.

  "Bobby? Are you there? Are you okay?"

  He clenched his teeth together again and waited for the pain to shock him back to life. "Yes, Sorry. I'm here." He walked out of the bedroom holding the phone to his ear.

  "Shall I drive over?"

  He adjusted his tie. "No it's okay, but thanks for the offer. I'm about to walk into town." He reached the top of the stairs and stopped. "Listen, about yesterday, I don't know how to..."

  "Don't then. Just promise me you'll come to see me before you do anything else."

  "Anything else?"

  "Like visiting Jacobs. Half of the town's over there. He's offering free funerals to the first fifty people who sign up. It's like a lunatic asylum."

  "You're kidding! What the hell is he doing?"

  "I have no idea. Just come to the office before you do anything. Promise?"

  Whether or not Jacobs intended on fulfilling his free offer was debatable, but his charade was turning Littleoak into a circus; a very weird one too. "Promise. I'll see you in about half an hour."

  He ended the call and started down the stairs. Jacobs was insane, it was obvious. He just hoped a few more people would see it before it was too late. He jumped down the last two steps. He remembered how Tom and he had dared each other to jump from the highest step. Inevitably it had ended badly with a trip to accident and emergency with a broken ankle but it had been a good way to get one.

  He stopped in his tracks. What was the picture on the wall? Why was there a portrait of his parents hanging on the wall? He took a step closer. It hadn't been there before, he was sure.

  His mouth dropped open when his mind caught up. It wasn't a family portrait, at least not in the traditional sense of the word. Two skeletons sat side by side posing for the camera. He peered closer. One of the skeletons was wearing a black suit and top hat. Were it not for the digital quality of the picture it might have been from the Victorian era. Were it not for the crimson handkerchief peeking from the top of the suit breast pocket it could have been anyone. The smaller figure wore a silver locket around its neck. The same one she had been buried with fifteen years before. The same crimson flourish his dad had worn to every funeral in Littleoak since time began.

  Bobby slammed his palm into his mouth. It was as much to force the scream back down as it was to jolt him away from the picture. It stopped the eruption of emotion but it did not draw his eyes away. Two chairs had been used to hold them upright and the gilt-edged mirror which hung above the fireplace in the parlour rose behind their skeletal forms.

  He didn't want to look; by God he didn't. He wanted to turn around, walk back upstairs and climb back into the soft arms of slumber again but he knew he had to. He had to take a step toward the mirror and see what the shadowy shape reflected in the mirror was. The shape which looked like it was sitting in the armchair.

  He knew instinctively what, or rather, who it was before he leaned in. Tom's arms stretched stiffly over the armrests and his legs were splayed out as if he was dozing on a Sunday afternoon. Yet his eyes weren't resting. They were open and the light from a lamp reflected the horror of what lay before him. Bobby touched the picture. He touched his brother's face. "Tom?" he asked.

  The vile cabinet stood beside him. Its wiry copper fingers reached into Tom's body and plucked whatever life was left from him like a common thief. Bobby could hold it back no longer and emitted a long drawn out wail. He beat his fists into the photo driving vicious shards of glass into his knuckles yet he barely felt the shards scrape against the bone. He was angry, more angry than he'd ever been; more angry than the days after they'd told him about Lucy. He reached in and grabbed the photo, his fingers already slick with blood and ripped it. Then he ripped it some more.

  Jacobs had been in the house. He'd probably got Tom's keys and let himself in during the night. So why didn't he just kill me? He had the chance, I was dead to the world. He walked into the parlour letting the blood-soaked photograph confetti fall from his fingers. His stomach churned with every step.

  An enormous golden mirror had been resident above the fireplace for over a hundred years. It had grown dusty of late without the touch of a caring hand, but remained impressive nevertheless. As Bobby crossed the threshold into the parlour, he realised with a terrible sinking, that the tradition had been broken.

  The frame still hung but the glass which had reflected Christmas parties, weddings and funerals, too many funerals, now contained a hideous new portrait. He didn't need to get too close to see what it was. He recognised the setting and the two men in it. Unlike the one in the hall, this one had been given an air of antiquity. The photo was black and white but it was not the true black and white of an age gone by. It was too sharp and the image too bright and that just made it worse.

  Bobby saw his bed with him lying in it. He saw his mouth ajar, deep in sleep. He saw his arm thrown above his head and in the gap, once occupied by Lucy, lay Tom. "My God," Bobby whispered and stepped back. At the foot of the frame, some words were written on a plaque but they were not large enough to be read from a distance. The letters skipped about like a cloud of tadpoles. He knew this had been done to draw him in; to irresistibly beckon him closer. Like a puppet he obeyed the strings of the master.

  How was it possible to sleep through something like this? Was it possible that the portrait had been doctored in some way. You could do all sorts of weird things with computer software. God knew he'd seen enough of Tom's porn photo manipulation to know it was possible. Even so, it didn't explain how someone had come into his house and carefully staged portraits of his family; his dead family.

  The last step brought the words into focus. "The Sons of Moreton. Memento Mori." Bobby grabbed the frame and wrenched it from the wall. The ancient fittings clung to the wall for a moment before letting go completely. Both frame and man tumbled into the armchair where, not six hours earlier, the embalmed body of Tom Moreton had sat staring at the skeletons of his dead parents gazing down at him.

  *

  Esther put the phone down. She hadn't meant to get involved with anyone. Life was complicated enough as it was without starting another relationship. Starting another relationship with someone who was clearly in the process of having a meltdown too. She didn't need it. She didn't need it at all. What she actually needed was to get in her car and drive away as fast as she could.

  She shook her head. She knew herself well enough to know that what she needed and what she wanted were not always compatible and they never had been. Bobby was her type down to the width of his tie and there was no getting away from that. Not even when the whole thing was likely to end in
tears. Or worse.

  She rubbed her eyes. Her mum hadn't been right about much but she was right about one thing. She couldn't recognise a bad situation if her life depended on it.

  "Good morning!" a voice called from the showroom. She'd closed the shop down early too many days now and word would get back to Johnson soon enough. Another lost customer wouldn't help matters at all.

  "Sorry, be right with you." She straightened her hair and walked out of the office.

  "Good morning. My aren't you looking pretty today!"

  She recognised his face immediately. It was the undertaker, Jacobs. She was lost for words and a terrible knot tightened itself around her guts.

  "I don't believe we've ever met. Not officially anyway. Allow me to introduce myself, Jacobs, Richard Jacobs."